Thursday, June 25, 2009

Save the Earth! Get Rid of Your Refrigerator!

By Alan Caruba

On June 22, Greenpeace USA put out the word that “A new study published today in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences shows that refrigerant chemicals, so called F-gases, are a more dangerous global warming threat than previously predicted.”

Apparently, in order to save the Earth, we must all unplug and get rid of our refrigerators and air conditioners.

The study was authored by scientists from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the United States government agencies, NOAA and EPA, along with a scientist from “the chemical company Dupont.” You don’t suppose that Dupont has come up with a new refrigerant that it would like to sell, do you?

As to anything NOAA and the EPA has to say about the environment, at this point anyone older than a kindergartner knows that virtually everything these agencies say about global warming is pure fiction. They long ago abandoned any pretence about offering science-based information on anything.

“The paper projects that HFC (hydrofluorocarbon) emissions will rise rapidly in coming years and decades, threatening to effectively cancel out some of the hard fought greenhouse gas reductions made through energy efficiency and clean energy deployment,” said Greenpeace.

Why is it that, at the very moment Congress is being asked to pass a huge energy tax called “Cap-and-Trade”, supposedly intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Greenpeace has chosen to begin warning everyone about the chemicals in refrigerators and air conditioners as the next great threat?

“We must aggressively phase out HFCs to effectively combat climate change,” says Greenpeace USA.

Why is it that Greenpeace is lying about greenhouse gas emissions, largely carbon dioxide and methane, both produced naturally by the Earth, as the cause of something that ended ten years ago? The Earth has been cooling since 1998. You’d think that NOAA and the EPA would know about that, wouldn’t you?

Does anyone recall the last time we heard about HFCs? It was the big Ozone Hole scare which you might have noticed no longer scares anyone. It turned out that there had always been ozone “holes” over the North and South Poles. The one in Antarctica is over an active volcano, Mount Erebus, where one might expect the atmosphere to be affected. The Earth’s several hundred active volcanoes no doubt have a similar affect.

The real cost of the Ozone Hole scare was the banning of Freon, the most effective refrigerant and fire retardant ever invented. Freon, invented in 1928, was colorless, odorless, nonflammable, and non-corrosive. It doesn’t get much better than that. It was also a lot less costly than the refrigerant that replaced it.

Let’s see, who sold Freon? Oh yes, I remember. It was Dupont. Could its research scientists have found a new chemical compound for refrigeration purposes? Would that enrich Dupont? Would Greenpeace get a big, fat donation if that happened?

Here’s my suggestion. Don’t believe anything Greenpeace has to say on this subject. Ignore the alleged scientific study by what are possibly the two most scientifically-corrupted government agencies extant in the U.S. today. Forget about global warming because it isn’t happening.

Give your refrigerator a big hug. In hospitals, refrigerators protect life-saving drugs. After the generation of electricity and the invention of the internal combustion engine, refrigeration is one of the greatest life enhancing advances of the modern era.

In my youth, we had something called an “ice box.” It cooled its contents because a man came every few days with a big block of ice and put it in the “ice box.” There was no such thing as air conditioning. Those were not “the good old days.”

16 comments:

Larry Sheldon said...

I thought we got rid of the HFC's (except the one that might have part of the credit collapse) years ago.

As I recall, getting rid of the HFC's then was garundamnteed to get rid of The Ozone Hole that was going to doom us all.

Alan Caruba said...

Larry, when are you ever going to understand that WE'RE DOOMED!

If it isn't the carbon dioxide and the methane, it's the HFCs. Its rising oceans. It's acne. Whatever.

And it's people like you that actually expect to have electricity all the time. And gas for your car. And a job!

Larry, repeat after me, WE'RE DOOMED!

Now, sit down and send all your money to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and President Obama. You might as well, they're going to get it anyway.

Larry Sheldon said...

Yeah, well, I've spent much of my working live snatching somebody's something out of somebody's fire -- it's a hard habit to break.

Did you ever see a movie ("Groundhog Day", maybe) where the lead is the only actor that knows what is coming next even though everybody has been through it as many times as he has?

I fee like that, sometimes. (My wife calls it my Voice In The Wilderness, or Prophet delusion.)

I've been through at least one prior "Global Warming", a "Eminent Ice Age" (not counting the "Nuclear Winter" followed by volcanoes that spewed way more into the atmosphere), "The Ozone Hole" (which exists still inspite of the terribly expensive stuff we did that was as I said, garondamnteed....

And don't get me started on the getting rid of the back-yard incineratores, which it turned out were (or the particulate "active carbon" they emitted) saving us from the real problem which was not addressed much for a while.

Alan Caruba said...

Larry, you are always welcome to chime in on anything here that interests you.

I like to think of the blog as a little family.

Elizabeth said...

When "scientists" can control sun spots and volcanos...then I'll worry about my fridge, ac, and car.
Thanks for being a voice of reason :)

electron janitor said...

Love your blog. have been reading you for years.

I think you ment to talk about CFC's and not HFC's?

Chlorofluorocarbon which was the big hype back in the late 80's and 90's

Alan Caruba said...

Thank you, EJ, and you're right about CFCs, but Greenpeace was discussing HFCs.

The Greens are totally desparate these days. There is surely a special place in Hell for these people. They hate humanity.

Larry Sheldon said...

When I wrote "HFC" I thought--that isn't rigth -- in fact I typed "CFC" at least once.

Buyt was too lazy to check it.

Larry Sheldon said...

Re Hatting on people.

Those are the same people who made fun of the mythical "destroyed a village to save it".

Alan Caruba said...

Larry, how would you like to be a writer like me whose work goes around the world in five minutes flat? Typos make me break out in a cold sweat.

Larry Sheldon said...

When I was getting paid for it, I spent a lot more time proof-reading (or had a clerk-typist who could type, read, edit, comment usefully, and chew gum, all at the same time.

One of the Great Questions, that.

I used to say "Write me a letter to so-and-so, CC the usual suspects, say that I [what ever I wanted to convey], include these attachments, and say that I'd like to have an answer by next Friday", and later that day or the next it would be in my in-box for signature, margins, fonts and font-sizes all worked out.

Meanwhile I would have worked on something else.

Kendra said...

Are their still clerk-typists / secretaries in the U.S.? I was a great secretary, if I do say so myself! Never had to compromise myself!

Got a degree in Anthro, decided not to pursue academic career (reasons include not desiring to be a secondary-source Marxist!).

Now, it seems the career has pretty much died out.

Kendra said...

Re typos: Yes, I do notice them and itch to correct but I agree that in comments sections, we often type in haste "between things" - Alan has to be better in the original article, but can slip up in comments.

Larry Sheldon said...

Clerks, typists, stenographers, and secretaries now have titles involving the words "executive", "administrative" and "assistant".

The old titles-with-honor are all gone.

I long for the days when "Mechanic" worked on my car, or my airplane, a "Carpenter" or "Cabinet Maker" worked in wood for me, and "craftsman" was spelled with a capital"C".

Now they are all "technicians".

I would like to know what changes perfectly good prose into typo laden trash.

I have papers that I wrote years ago that I know I proof-read carefully, as did the clerk (and it it was very, typists and proofreaders in the steno pool) that errors in that simply could not have been there when I published them.

Kendra said...

Sorry Alan, one more off-topic comment: I agree about secretaries now being administrative assistants (keep in mind, they often actually were). I mean the profession, under any name, is dying out, at least here in Switzerland.

Globalization has brought about a situation where companies located here use English as the company language. Everyone gets used to a lower standard because no one recognizes (not being English mother tongue) that what's being written is not good English (there may be an American CEO who would notice but he/she would hardly be able to correct everything!) No longer are "real" letters sent, everyone sends their own e-mails (where a lower quality seems to be acceptable in any case).

Once bank directors had 2 secretaries, now there is one for 10 or more directors.

When I first moved here, I was in high demand, without knowing more than a couple of German words. Now, the very few actual "secretarial" jobs really boil down to multilingual. Perfect German, French, Italian, English. There are enough with German mother tongue to notice that I don't write perfect German (same with French). That my English is great, they don't know! P.S. I do speak fluent Swiss-German (Zurich German).

So, while I lucked into a temporary job with an old friend for a couple of years (after 20 years of translations), after that it'll be "hello McDonald's!"

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